


Forgotten Childhood

by Flyting



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Kidfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4554648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic happens, causing Rumple and Belle to both revert to their childhood selves and wander around the castle together having wee adventures. </p><p>Because Rumbelle have more ‘potions accidents’ than Snape’s first year class and because I’ve seen bb!Rumple and bb!Belle, but nothing of the two of them together. Diabetes-inducing cuteness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgotten Childhood

“Hullo? Are you awake?”

Belle whined and stretched. She was not awake. Although she was just enough so now to realize that the surface she was lying on was both cold and hard.

Something poked her shoulder. “Hullo?” 

She swatted at it, making contact with a small hand, and heard a distant, “Ow.” 

She tried to pull the blankets back over her head, only to realize that there were no blankets. No blankets, and her bed was cold and hard and thoroughly uncomfortable. This is enough, finally, to make Belle shrug off the last clinging bits of sleep and crack open her eyes. 

There are no blankets because she’s sleeping on the floor, and someone is poking her because there’s a tow-haired little boy kneeling on the stones next to her.

He’s cradling one hand to his chest, but he smiles at her, seemingly pleased that she’s awake.

“Why did you take my blankets?” Belle asks him, irritated. Her papa always teased her for being cranky first thing in the mornings, but she couldn’t help it.

“I didn’t take anything from you!” The boy says, his smile falling. “You were lying on the floor like that when I found you. And you didn’t have to hit me.” He adds, crossly.

“You were poking me.”

“I just wanted you to wake up. I don’t know where I am.”

Belle sits up and takes a look around, frowning. They’re in a room in a castle, she can tell by the high walls and stone floors, but it’s not any castle she’s ever been in. A hodgepodge of little tables and shelves, covered in delicate glass and silver things she doesn’t know the names of, litter the space. Some of the things are making little whirring noises, others are full of colorful liquids and bubbling merrily. 

All of which means that she doesn’t know where she is either.

Belle brushes off her skirts and stands up. The boy follows suit. “So where are we?”

He’s got an accent that she can’t quite place, but it makes him draw out his vowels in funny ways.

“It looks like a magician’s tower. I’ve read about them. In books.” Belle says. Or rather, her nurse had read them to her because Papa said that books with magicians in them were too difficult for girls her age. But the boy with the funny accent didn’t need to know that.

“Do you remember how we got here?” he asks, kicking at a bit of broken glass on the floor by his feet. It looks like something had spilled.

“No. Do you?”

“No. I just woke up over there.” He points to a spot on the other side of a table, near where Belle had been lying. “And then I saw you.”

“And poked me,” Belle adds, just to make sure he doesn’t forget that she’s still cross about that.

“And poked you,” He agrees, with a long-suffering sigh.

Belle takes another look around the room. She isn’t sure where she is or why, but she’s sure of where she doesn’t want to be.

“I think we should go before the magician comes back,” she decides.

“I agree.”

Belle takes his hand and leads the way to a set of twisting stairs set in the floor. She hitches up her skirt with the other hand and they start down into the darkness. Torches flare to light as they descend, lighting the way. The boy stares at them and clutches her hand tighter.

“I’ve never been in a castle before,” he says, impressed, as they reach the end of the curving stairs and find a long corridor, lined with tapestries. “It’s big.”

“I have. I live in one,” she replies proudly. “My papa has a big castle by the sea.”

“Oh! You have your own castle?” He falters, dropping her hand to stare at her.

Belle picks a direction with more confidence than she really feels and starts off. If they just keep going down they should find the kitchens, and probably people. At least, that’s how it worked in her castle. She doesn’t tell him that in her castle they would have met somebody by now. And there wasn’t a magician in the tower, as far as she knew.

“So are you a princess then?” he asks, hurrying to catch up with her, “Am I supposed to bow and call you ‘Your Majesty’?”

“I think queens get called ‘Your Majesty’,” Belle says, remembering what her nurse had taught her. “And I’m not a princess- just a lady. My papa is Lord Maurice of the Marchlands.” She adds proudly. 

“Oh,” is all he says. They continue in silence for a while. “So what should I call you, then?”

“You can just call me Belle. That’s my name.”

“I’m Rumplestiltskin.”

“You’re a what?” she stops, turning.

“Rumplestiltskin. My name is Rumplestiltskin.”

“Oh…” Belle says, frowning. “I’m sorry.”

“Most people just call me Rumple,” he says, turning a little pink around the ears.

Belle peers at him for a second, then gives him her best curtsey. “Well it’s nice to meet you, Rumple.”

“Nice to meet you too, Belle.” He replies, bending awkwardly in the middle in what she thinks is an attempt at a bow. The pink has spread to his cheeks now.

She takes his hand again and tugs him along down the corridor. “Come on, Rumple. I don’t want to be here when that magician comes back.”


End file.
